Chertoff urges speed in building fenceOpposition puts border agents at risk, he says

Published 5:30 am, Saturday, June 7, 2008

Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff said he remained willing to consult with critics but would not surrender the authority to override environmental objections.

Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff said he remained willing to consult with critics but would not surrender the authority to override environmental objections.

Photo: BUSTER DEAN, CHRONICLE

Chertoff urges speed in building border fence

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Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Friday he had attended the funerals of too many Border Patrol agents killed in the line of duty to permit environmentalists to block construction of barriers and all-weather road along portions of Texas' border with Mexico.

Chertoff, speaking during an interview with the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle, pitted the safety of Border Patrol agents against the efforts of environmentalists to stymie Bush administration plans to complete a border fence before leaving office in January. Some 670 miles of pedestrian fencing or vehicle barriers are planned along the 1,947-mile U.S.-Mexico boundary.

No time to waste

Chertoff, who has set aside some environmental restrictions to speed fence construction, said he didn't want to "get enmeshed in endless litigation" with environmentalists who he said opposed fencing, lighting and other improvements along the border that would help the Border Patrol seize undocumented immigrants, smugglers and drug traffickers.

"I've gone to too many memorial services where agents were killed in rollover accidents pursuing smugglers because there wasn't an all-weather road," Chertoff said. "I have to tell you in all honesty as between the sensitivity of an owl and having to look a family in the eye and say, 'I'm sorry you lost a loved one because we can't build a road.' I'm going with protecting the family and protecting the Border Patrol agent."

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The Border Patrol lists eight officers who have died in the line of duty since Chertoff took office in 2005. Wayne Bartholomew, executive director with Frontera Audubon, a nonprofit conservation organization in Lower Rio Grande Valley, called Chertoff's comments "disingenuous, false and misleading."

Bartholomew said the federal government had short-cut the environmental review process with the border fence project, failing to fully consider the potential impact on other public safety issues, including air and water pollution.

"This isn't about building an all-weather road," Bartholomew said. "It's about following a process, and that process includes over 100 years of laws established by the United States Congress. He has put communities at risk by waiving these laws and unilaterally charging ahead without any oversight at all."

Chertoff has been battling resistance along the Texas border to the planned barriers, including a recent federal lawsuit by the Texas Border Coalition that includes leaders from 10 Texas border communities from Brownsville to El Paso.

Chertoff, a former federal appeals court judge known for a no-nonsense style, said he remained willing to consult with critics but would not surrender the authority awarded him by the Republican-led Congress in 2005 to override environmental objections.

"We have had multiple meetings with some of the most bitter critics, people that we have talked to again and again," Chertoff said. "Now consultation means — we try to see if we can work out an accommodation. It doesn't mean we consult for two years, it doesn't mean that a local official has a veto."

'A receptive hearing'

Chertoff conceded construction of border barriers "disproportionately" impacted border-land owners and border communities but insisted the obstacles served a greater good by impeding drug smugglers and undocumented immigrants.

"Some of the illegal migrants and drug smugglers who are coming through the border are causing destruction and problems deeper into Texas, deeper into other parts of the country," Chertoff said, citing a conversation with a local law enforcement officer. "What am I to say to that sheriff, 'Sorry I can't help you because the local mayor doesn't want to have a fence, so you're going to have to pay the price?"

Chertoff said local community leaders would find "a receptive hearing" if willing to negotiate alternative routes or steps to mitigate the impact of barriers.

"But those who just oppose it, I'm sorry, but I have to say respectfully, the Border Patrol tells me from a security standpoint (and) their own force protection standpoint, as well as from the operational (point of view that) fencing is appropriate in some areas."

Chertoff downplayed the possibility that his department would extend the less intrusive, high-tech surveillance system in Arizona known as a "virtual fence" into Texas, where the border with Mexico is defined by the Rio Grande River.

"Understand that its utility depends on the landscape," Chertoff said. "When you're dealing in an area, for example, with a lot of brush, and a river, it may not be as effective as an area where you have a kind of a larger, more wilderness type of terrain."

Chertoff said his department was paying landowners for access to their property to survey potential routes for the barriers.

Chertoff emphasized that he would not submit to "years of litigation" that could postpone construction for a decade.